The invention relates to a davenport having two beds disposed side by side on a supporting frame, the one bed (back bed) being able to be tilted upward with respect to the other bed (seat bed) so as to serve as the back of a sofa such that the front/bottom edge of the back comes above the rear area of the seat.
Such a davenport is already known from German Pat. No. 1,181,876, although it is designed primarily as a sofa, i.e., for seating. To swing to the horizontal position, the end frame members of the back bed are elongated downwardly and articulated at their bottom ends to the seat frame. In the normal position, i.e., when serving as a sofa back, the back bed is supported at the rear by a supporting anchor, which is articulated on the one hand to the bottom portion of the end frame member and on the other hand to the rear end of the supporting frame. When the back is folded downwardly, the supporting links thus simultaneously swing about their bottom horizontal axis and push the back bed--and the seat bed also--forwardly with respect to the supporting frame, so that therefore the seat bed and the back bed will each come to rest partially on and partially cantilevered over either side of the supporting frame.
Aside from the fact that the back bed is relatively narrow, corresponding to the height of a sofa back, it would be very desirable for the davenport to be usable also as a single bed of normal width. Of course, one can sleep on a sofa, such as the one described in German Pat. No. 1,181,876, namely on the seat part, but the complaint can be made that the seat part is too narrow to serve as a bed. Even though the seat part extends further back under the back part, all that is available to lie on is the width from the front edge to the back rest, but this width is determined by the conventional "seat depth", i.e., the anatomical measure from the sitter's calves to the sitter's back.
It is the object of the invention to design a davenport of the kind described above, which will be convertible not only from a sofa (with normal seat depth) to a double bed and vice versa, but also to a single bed of conventional width, combining simplicity of operation with simplicity of design.